Photograph by: Jacques Boissinot
, The Canadian Press

Few fighters have had a more decorated Ultimate Fighting Championship career than Michael Bisping. That success is at great odds with the growing perception that his years with UFC have been one big disappointment.

With14 wins inside the octagon, only seven people (six former champions along with a former title challenger) have more UFC victories than Bisping. At the same time, no UFC fighter has won more without competing in at least one title match.

He’s main evented or co-main evented more than a dozen UFC cards, and been treated as a feature attraction on a half-dozen others. Yet the two times he was explicitly told a title shot awaited him with a win, Bisping was knocked out by Dan Henderson in July 2010 and lost a unanimous decision to Chael Sonnen in January 2012.

He’s gained fame and fortune in the near-decade since he burst on the scene, winning The Ultimate Fighter 3. But the thing he wants most – a title shot – has eluded him. His middleweight main event on Saturday versus Cung Le will go a long way to determining how the final act in the Brit’s career plays out.

“This is a must-win fight for me. I have to prove to the UFC, I have to prove to the fans, and I have to prove to myself that I’m still an elite fighter who can go on, get some wins over contenders, and fight for the UFC title,” said Bisping (24-6), currently ranked No. 8 in UFC’s official middleweight rankings, in the lead-up to Saturday’s main event versus Le at UFC Fight Night from Macau, China.

“I’ve been fighting high-level competition for the last six, seven years. But I don’t want to be one of the guys in the top-10, who wins a few and loses a few. I want to be No.1 and I want to fight for the UFC title.”

Bisping, who after being sidelined for 12 months with a career-threatening eye injury, looked listless in a unanimous-decision loss to Tim Kennedy in Quebec City in April. (“It was the worst performance of my life,” he admits.) Another performance like that, he knows, would mean back-to-back defeats and all but end any title aspirations. At the age of 35, he knows time isn’t on his side.

“I’ve never lost two in a row in my life, and I don’t plan to,” he said.

“I need to win to prove that I’m not just some fighter with a name who is fighting here and there for paydays. My record over my last six fights is win one, lose one, win one, lose one, and that’s just not good enough for what I want to do in my career.”

While he hopes to regain his prior form inside the cage, Bisping hasn’t lost his trash-talking touch. He took a jab at Le, saying he’s only back in the fight game to promote his film career (Le has acted in a wide array of action and martial arts films).

“He hasn’t fought in a couple of years, so I’m guessing his profile has dipped. He’s probably not getting too many embarrassing kung-fu movie offers right now and, probably worst of all for him, Channing Tatum has stopped retweeting him,” said Bisping.

“I’m going to put a beating on him, and he can disappear again back to B-movies. … I’m going to take this win, cement my place in the top-10, and then go about getting back to the top-four before the end of the year.”

Le brushed off Bisping’s verbal jabs, insisting that he’s finally healthy after two years and is back because of his love for the fight game. Le, who after competing in a wide array of martial arts made his professional mixed martial arts debut with the Strikeforce promotion in 2006 at the age of 33. Though he won the Strikeforce middleweight title in 2008, he hasn’t taken a championship-or-bust approach since his UFC debut in 2011. He’s wanted intriguing fights, and a showdown versus Bisping – “one of the most recognizable names in the UFC,” Le said – certainly qualifies.

“Right now, I’m thinking of the Bisping fight as my championship fight in the UFC,” said Le (9-2).

“I got to the UFC very late in my career, so this to me is my championship fight. This is on the same level as my fight for the Strikeforce belt against Frank Shamrock in 2008. That’s how I see it and that’s how I’ve prepared. I think beating Bisping in a main event matters, a lot of people will see the fight and the result will stand out on my career.”

FIGHT NOTES: Hours after Bisping and Le main event in Macau, another UFC Fight Night card takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma where former lightweight champion and No. 1 contender Benson Henderson (21-3) takes on fifth-ranked Rafael dos Anjos (21-7) in the main event. The co-main event pits Lethbridge native Jordan Mein (28-9) against Mike Pyle (26-9-1), two welterweights hoping to take a step up into top-10 competition.

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